


Color Spectrum

by audreycritter



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Kryptonite, So does Clark, bruce feels awkward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 06:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11549004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Or, Four Times Clark Deals with Kryptonite and One Time Bruce Does.Fluff, hurt/comfort, angst; various short stories in which characters encounter the different colors/forms of kryptonite.





	Color Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jerseydevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/gifts).



> Thanks to jerseydevious for talking through ideas!

The day had been a long and frustrating one but that was hardly going to stop Bruce from going out on patrol. In fact, patrol was usually his preferred method of dealing with long and frustrating days. It was a more direct way of feeling like it  _mattered_ , doing something that wasn’t about him.

He was already in the cape and suit, cowl hanging back, going over routes and recent crime reports on the computer to plot out the route that needed the most attention in the absence of specific emergency.

There was a rush of chilled cave air and he knew before he turned that Superman would be there. He glanced at the section of screen on the second monitor that managed the alert system for the Watchtower, confident he hadn’t missed any attempts at contact.

And then he waited, another moment.

Superman didn’t start talking. That was unusual and meant that he was angry or that something else was wrong.

“Superman,” Bruce acknowledged.

Still silence.

Finally, he swiveled in the seat, mostly expecting an angry scowl. If his guess wasn’t wrong, Clark would yell about the same second he turned so he would spin to face Clark shouting.

But instead of a face twisted with barely restrained fury while he floated a few feet off the ground, Bruce found himself staring at Superman firmly grounded with an openly anxious expression. Worry bloomed in his chest, pricking like creeping thorns, but he kept his voice level just at the same time Clark registered his direct attention and tried-- and failed-- to adopt a more neutral look.

“Hey,” Clark said, his voice slightly strained. “Hi.”

“What happened?” Bruce asked bluntly. There was no point in putting off direct inquiry if Clark was that visibly distraught.

“Uh.” Clark’s eyes darted sideways and he chewed on his lip. “Nothing. Just. It’s stupid. Can…uh.”

“Out with it, Clark,” Bruce ordered, turning to the computer. He pulled up Metropolis newsfeeds. If Clark wasn’t going to just tell him, he’d start hunting anyway. Even before Clark approached the desk, he suspected some sort of compromising magic, and that meant  _villain_ , not criminal.

“Can I, uh, keep you company? For a bit?”

Unless he knew what was going on, he wasn’t going out on patrol with an unstable superpowered alien, so Bruce bit back a sigh and nodded. “Yes.”

“Oh, good,” Clark said, exhaling in a rush. “Thanks.”

He sat down in the other chair near the computer and hummed quietly while Bruce scrolled Metropolis and Gotham police scanner feeds. The humming quickly turned nervous, a sort of agitated noise that cut off abruptly and Bruce checked out of the corner of his eye. Clark had both hands clamped on his own knees.

“I’m okay,” Clark said, his voice far more tense than anyone who was  _okay_  had ever sounded. “Just a run in with, um, some kryptonite. Red. Red kryptonite.”

Now  _that_  was surprising. Bruce stopped typing and faced him directly. “Where?”

“Doesn’t matter. Took care of it,” Clark said with a shrug. “Don’t wanna go home yet. Can I…no. It’s stupid. Never mind.”

“What?” Bruce frowned at him and then pulled up red kryptonite in his database, to confirm his memory. Mood swings and mutations. He briefly considered pulling up the cowl, but Clark already seemed so unsettled that he wasn’t sure what even that defensive motion would trigger. “Do I need to contain you somewhere? For safety?”

“CanIholdyourhand.” Clark said in a rush, head tilted toward the floor.

 _”What.”_  Bruce, through sheer force of will, kept himself from fully facing Clark with a raised eyebrow. Carefully controlling his own reactions was one of the best ways to keep from spurring a sudden mood change in Clark, and he realized in that instant why Clark was  _there_  instead of the Tower or back at home with Lois.

“CanIholdyourhand.” Clark mumbled this time, his whole face flushed red even in the reflection on the darkened monitor just to the left of Bruce.

Bruce had armored gauntlets he could pull on, sitting right there next to him and waiting for him to go out, but even those would do little good if Clark in a moment of distraction or sudden anger decided to crush his bones to pulp.

“No,” he said.

“Okay,” Clark said quietly. “It’s okay. I’m just…I think I might…it’s stupid.”

“What.”

“I think I might die.”

“You aren’t going to die, Kal. Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

Soft wasn’t something Bruce did easily but even he wasn’t a completely heartless monster. It was easy to sound gentle and reassuring in the face of that kind of fear.

“Just feels like it,” Clark insisted, a little sourly. He fell silent and Bruce went back to working on the computer. If the best thing right now was actually just letting Clark keep him company while things wore off, then he could get some work done and not inspire some sudden rage in Clark at busy activity. There was a tiny part of Bruce that was fighting genuine fear at the bare truth, that if Clark really did swing rapidly to destruction there was little he could do to stop him for very long.

Only five minutes had passed before a rattling noise grew in rapid pitch next to him and he looked to see Clark, his cape drawn around his shoulders, shaking so hard in the chair that the screws around the locked casters underneath were starting to come loose.

“Clark,” Bruce said, bracing himself. They’d faced all kinds of evil together and he didn’t think he’d ever seen Clark this visibly frightened and if  _that’s_  how bad he was doing, then he could risk his hand. He held his hand out beside him and the shaking subsided almost as soon as Clark grabbed it. To his credit, it was a reasonable grip.

He began reviewing security footage from an older case and Clark edged his chair a bit closer.

Then closer again.

“What, exactly, are you feeling?” Bruce asked, deciding this was something worth clarifying.

“Eh,” Clark said, noncommittally.

“That is not a feeling,” Bruce replied. He was probably doing a terrible job of attempting to lighten the mood or alleviate stress. He sort of wished Dick was there; Dick was better at this sort of thing. But Clark already seemed embarrassed enough and it would mean putting Dick in potential danger, so Bruce decided against it.

“…clingy?” Clark guessed. Bruce could see him biting his lip in the monitor reflection.

“Hn,” Bruce said, managing to feel surprised and unsurprised at the same time. He was typing one-handed and the grip on his other hand tightened incrementally. “Kal.” The grip loosened just a little.

“Sorry.”

“Hn.”

The monitor showed a four-way split of security camera recordings, all playing at once. They watched for a few minutes and Bruce thought about offering to go upstairs, instead, but the cave really was better equipped to handle large-scale fighting or destruction if it came to that.

Over to the right, the elevator door opened and Alfred stepped out with a basket of clean towels, likely to restock the shower room behind the practice mats. He stopped for the smallest of double-takes, looking over Bruce working at the computer and Clark sitting nearby and still clutching his hand.

“Might I get either of you gentlemen a drink?” Alfred offered, as if there was nothing unusual about this sight.

“I’m fine,” Bruce said.

Clark shook his head.

“Very well,” Alfred said with a nod, and he went on his way. A few moments later, he was heading back upstairs.

The security feed was still running. Bruce rewound and studied a section by leaning forward. When he settled back into his seat, there was motion to his side and Clark moved closer. Their chairs were almost touching now.

In the next breath, Clark leaned his head on Bruce’s shoulder.

“Clark.” Bruce said.

“Sorry,” Clark said, but he didn’t move. Bruce sighed then, long and drawn out and distracted from the danger by the weight on his shoulder that he instinctively wanted to shake off. He held himself absolutely still and Clark sniffled. “I’m sorry. I feel  _really_  weird. I should go. I should…”

He trailed off and Bruce ducked his shoulder away, his mind made up, and stood. Clark sat back with an openly wounded drop of his mouth that he seemed to be attempting to get under control.

“Stand up,” Bruce ordered.

Clark stood, facing him.

Bruce pulled him into a hug and Clark, granite-solid alien strength notwithstanding, fairly melted and let out a long, relieved breath.

“This is a special exception,” Bruce warned him, when Clark’s arms showed no sign of slackening their hold anytime soon. “And it’s over. Right now.”

“One more minute,” Clark protested. “You give  _really_  good hugs. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I have been informed.”

“Like,  _really_  good hugs. This is helping. A lot.”

“You’re saying I’m stuck here.”

“Just a minute,” Clark insisted.

Bruce responded by gently squeezing again. Maybe an increased level of physical affection on top of the offered hug would speed things up. It wasn’t that he didn’t  _like_  hugs exactly, but that he had a special category of occasions in which they felt acceptable or wanted and this wasn’t necessarily one of them.

But then, if it was keeping Clark from shaking furniture to pieces or razing buildings with his heat vision or even just feeling like absolute shit, he could handle it for another moment. Another minute  _max_.

“Clark,” Bruce said, when at least seventy seconds had passed. “I have work to do.”

It wasn’t  _technically_  true.

“Sorry,” Clark said, without releasing him.

“Kal.”

“I said  _sorry_ ,” Clark said, with a slight whine. “It’s not like I like it either.”

Bruce didn’t sigh this time, even if he wanted to, and he awkwardly patted Clark’s back. It would have felt and been less awkward if Clark had been a child. What would Dick do in this situation? Maybe make a joke. Maybe that would help. Bruce couldn’t think of  _anything_.

“I mean. It’s a good hug. It’s a  _really_  good hug,” Clark said. “I mean, I don’t like feeling this way. It’s awful.”

“Do you still feel like you’re going to die?” Bruce asked quietly, giving up on trying to think of any humorous quip to alleviate things. It would probably backfire anyway.

“A little,” Clark said. “But a little less.”

Bruce cast a regretful glance at the computer and then reached one arm out to freeze and close the security footage he’d been trying to review. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said. “Alfred will make tea.”

“Okay,” Clark said, pulling back. He was staring at his red boots now, while Bruce unhooked his black cape from his own shoulders. “Thanks. I mean. Yeah, thanks. It’s helping.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bruce said. For all his uneasiness, he really did wish he could just fix it somehow, and it was more for seeing how miserable Clark was than his own discomfort. “We’ll…” he swallowed his distaste at the phrase, “…hang out.”

“That sounds nice,” Clark said, giving him a small grin.

“And tomorrow, none of this ever happened,” Bruce warned. Clark’s relief was evident and he nodded quickly. Bruce doubted that he’d want to remember it any more than Bruce himself would.

“Is there something wrong with us?” Clark asked, when Bruce moved toward the locker where he’d kept day clothes to wear upstairs. He was sounded less unstable which was a good sign. “I mean, hanging out is what friends do. It shouldn’t be such a big deal.”

Bruce froze, one hand on the locker.

“I guess not,” he admitted. When was the last time he  _had_  just hung out with someone who wasn’t part of his own weird little family? He and Clark did things together but it wasn’t exactly traditional friendship material.

“Maybe,” Clark was wringing his cape in his hands now, absently, like he wasn’t aware he was doing it. “Maybe we can do it again sometime, when I don’t feel…like this.”

“Maybe,” Bruce said quietly. “Let’s see if we survive this time first.”

Clark laughed. It was shaky but it was a laugh, at least. Bruce smiled while pulling the armor over his head and felt a note of triumph. Clark trailed after him to the elevator and while he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, while the elevator descended from the Manor level.

“So. A movie? We could cuddle.”

Bruce whipped his head around so fast that Clark laughed again and Bruce glared when he realized Clark had been joking.

“That isn’t funny, Kal.”

“Yes, it was,” Clark insisted, sounding more like himself by the second. His expression grew serious and he had that intense, earnest look in his eye that made Bruce want to squirm. He’d never mentioned it, but it felt a little bit like Diana’s lasso. “Thank you. Really.”

“Hn,” Bruce said gruffly. He paused and the elevator doors slid open. “You’re welcome.”

“You really do give  _good_  hugs,” Clark said, stepping on with him. His feet weren’t quite touching the floor which, kryptonite- and mood-wise was a good sign. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

“Just saying,” Clark said. “Maybe once a year. For special occasions. It’d be good for you.”

“Kal,” Bruce said. The elevator was rising and it caught Clark’s hovering feet on the way up.

“Christmas, maybe,” Clark went on. “Or maybe a birthday?”

Bruce closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. At least Clark was feeling better. At least he’d kept a city from being destroyed, or even the cave. At least.

“I’ll figure it out. You can put it on your calendar so you have time to prepare.”

“Clark,” Bruce said. “Don’t make me throw you out.”

Clark grinned and Bruce didn’t mind it, really, not if he was being honest.


End file.
